From Plex to Jellyfin Media Server

> "My media content had been pushed aside into a submenu while the app promotes its own streaming media and premium services instead."

This is my biggest pet-peeve coming from Linux world. In Linux the music players you find bundled with different distros are simple, but they just work.

However since moving to MacOS, I have to either use iTunes or Music, and in Android the default music player and the latest updates of the alt music player I installed the author problem is true; they expect me to use their services and that's front and clear, while my local music is hidden away in a menu button.

This is a fairly ridiculous situation IMHO (well, solitaire in Windows getting ads/online is slightly more, but I'll never go there) since a music player that fulfills my needs is pretty easy: show a list of artists, play either the whole artist or a single album in shuffle mode.

Attempt 1: https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1364892370509127681

Attempt 2: https://twitter.com/FPresencia/status/1578720636645826560

on mac what about iina?

also, with brew or macports you can install pretty much any audio player you want

The biggest problem with IINA is that it regularly hangs on the legacy part of my vid collection (you know, mpg files and such), so I had to use it with mpv on standby. Mpv is absolutely stable, so the problem I guess is in some components that IINA added (GUI?).

Besides I am not sure if IINA video collection capabilities cover author’s demands (can’t say, I use it strictly as a player).

There are a lot of music players for the Mac, here are a few of them:

https://swinsian.com/

https://colibri-lossless.com/

https://cog.losno.co/

https://vox.rocks/

I recommend VLC - works well on windows, ios, macos, and android and frankly improves over the native players in each without unnecessary frills.

I think GP's issue is not lack of technical solutions but that most OSs and BigTech are increasingly user hostile to extract more revenue.

I alsobfind it concerning that they are succeding. We now have whole chunks of the world's demographic that don't even know it doesn't have to be that way.

and there is foobar2000 for Mac[0]

[0] https://www.foobar2000.org/

I've not managed to install Lollypop using mac ports. It's written in python but I think it's ui library doesn't work on mac.

Swinsian is excellent for large libraries too.

Yes. I have about 2.5 TB of music and Swinsian does not break a sweat.

If everything else fails, there's always ncmpcpp: https://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp/

I find https://www.strawberrymusicplayer.org to be great across Linux and macOS alike.

Expecting that the typical user wants to use a streaming service, and deprioritising development of tools/components that target other workflows, is not user-hostile. It is clearly the way things are, and the nerds are being dragged kicking and screaming.

> However since moving to MacOS, I have to either use iTunes or Music, […]; they expect me to use their services and that's front and clear, while my local music is hidden away in a menu button.

I'm not sure what you are referring to here. Listening to your own music in the macOS Music app is as simple as dragging (importing) the music into Music.app and selecting any of the options ("Recently Added", "Songs", etc.) in the Library sidebar.

Most media players I've used work like that. The application reopens where you last left off, so it is not like the Apple Music "Explore" or "Listen Now" page is shown on every launch to push the service on you.

I think the complaint makes sense in relation to the Apple Music sidebar items, but considering that there are users who want to use Apple Music, how would you surface it without having an easily discoverable item in the sidebar? I think having the option to hide it would be enough to alleviate it, but apparently one cannot, so that's a point against Apple here.

Amen. I'm 100% in the old-school, self-managed local media camp, but I'm well aware that I'm an extreme minority and can't expect mass-market companies to cater to my use case.

I'm probably one of the last 1,000 people still using Apple Home Sharing, but honestly I can't even believe it's still working. There must be someone on the inside that uses it at home and keeps fixing it whenever the architecture shifts around it.

As someone else who has moved from Linux (Ubuntu budgie) to MacOS this doesns't make sense.

Load your music into "Music" and it is all there and not "hidden in a sub-menu". ITunes is terrible, but "Music" isnt bad.

Has items on the left for "recently added, or "Songs" can sort by ratings, search, etc.

> and in Android the default music player and the latest updates of the alt music player I installed the author problem is true; they expect me to use their services and that's front and clear, while my local music is hidden away in a menu button.

For Android, give this one a try:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ch.blinkenlights.android.van...

Tell it which directories to search (if its defaults are not to your liking) and all your local music is front and center -- and no "streaming services" anywhere in the player.

Woah, this looks like a fork of Clementine! I didn't know it was still around. This was my go to back when I actually kept a local music library.

Poweramp is alive and doing fine still as well.

I completely disagree:

- Removing the concept of files, folders, and folder paths

- Removing the concept of URLs and URL resolution

- Saving files directly to a cloud based storage without local offline representation

This is not deprioritising, this actively removing features and being hostile.

More worrying is how exceedingly fragile all of this is. One company bankrupcy, one government embargo, one anti-government protest in an opressive regime and all of your online self is gone.

Which in turn, Clementine is a fork of the original Amarok. :)

Awesome, I thought clementine was just dead without successor

VLC’s UI and shortcuts make it a poor macOS citizen. IINA, which is custom-made for Mac, is a much better fit.

But on OSX, there are TONS of choices for music apps. You just need to bother yourself to explore the landscape a bit. Nobody will force you to use Apple's apps.

On Android, PowerAmp is still there and still the best.

If anyone ever forced you to use Windows, then MusicBee is the best.

Try Dopamine on Windows. It's very simple and light https://github.com/digimezzo/dopamine

Why would you use Dopamine instead of Foobar 2000?

I'm using https://www.navidrome.org which support streaming listening on mobile clients.

> I'm 100% in the old-school, self-managed local media camp, but I'm well aware that I'm an extreme minority and can't expect mass-market companies to cater to my use case.

We are now the Eloi and mass-market companies are the Morlocks.

MacOS dumb UI choices like a global menu make it a a poor UX OS. VLC has it right.

I love VLC. I've got the follow alias to shuffle what's in my music directory from the command line, very convenient:

alias music='find /home/me/music > /tmp/tunes.m3u; vlc -I rc -Z --no-auto-preparse /tmp/tunes.m3u'

Stay strong brother. I still use and prefer local-everything.

There's dozens of us! Dozens!

> How would you surface it without having an easily discoverable item in the sidebar?

There are many ways!

- The "music player" plays your local music, the "music shop/service/itunes/spotify" can handle music stream/buying/etc, which gets incorporated into your music player. Or you'd have all your local and streaming music (IF you subscribe) mixed all together seamlessly.

- Allow to easily change the default music player in the system. They make it impossible now, you have to fiddle with 3rd party software and scripts.

- Only require agreeing with the terms if you are going to buy music, not for playing your own music. Don't analyze my local music for your algorithms, thanks.

And TBF, Apple Music is still one of the best closed source music players I've tried, but pushing for their service hard is a no-go, I don't want to feel like I'm being sold at every time I'm using a simple app.

> Listening to your own music in the macOS Music app is as simple as dragging (importing) the music into Music.app and selecting any of the options ("Recently Added", "Songs", etc.) in the Library sidebar.

This was not true in my experience. Sure it worked most of the time but I had tracks in my collection which were apparently incompatible with the Music.app and would not play. This led to me migrating to Plex about 4 years ago.